Naperville Central advances to title game

Naperville Central didn't outscore Chicago Schurz after the first quarter of Friday's semifinal game in the 90th annual Chuck Dayton Holiday Classic in DeKalb.

Fortunately, a fantastic start gave the Redhawks a big enough lead early and they held on for a 55-43 victory.

The Redhawks (9-2) advance to play Lemont in Saturday's 8 p.m. championship game.

"They came in 10-0 for a reason because they're a good team," Redhawks coach Pete Kramer said. "I thought it was a good win for us, especially playing for the third night in a row. And we're still learning and we'll continue to learn. As long we learn from certain things, especially pressure like that, we will only get better."

Dillon Kane, who scored all 10 of his points in the opening half, gave the Redhawks a nice boost as Naperville Central owned the first quarter 18-6.

"I think it was our defensive pressure that led to our offense there," Kane said. "Everyone is unselfish on the team and looking for the extra pass and open looks, and we rebounded and defended well to start the game."

Previously undefeated Schurz (10-1), which trailed 26-18 at halftime, showed a lot of fight in the third quarter, pulling to within 29-27 before Cameron Dougherty's second-chance 3-pointer that came after an offensive hustle rebound from Thomas Dahl.

The Bulldogs clawed back to within 33-32 on Jaland Mitchell's jumper, but Kevin Maloney followed with a three-point play on a putback and then added a tip-in to end the third quarter to give Naperville Central a 38-32 lead.

"It was a good, hard-fought, grind-it-out kind of win," Kramer said. "I thought their quickness obviously did get to us a little bit, but I thought we kept our composure and executed when we had to do down the stretch."

The Redhawks committed 17 turnovers but so did the Bulldogs. The Redhawks also tallied 17 second-half points, including the baskets from Maloney and Dougherty.

A dunk from Ben Wolf followed by Nicholas Baskin taking a charge at the other end sealed the victory in the final minute. Now the Redhawks are a game away from bringing home a championship trophy.

"We had a tough loss to Waubonsie Valley coming into this tournament," Kane said. "To now take down a 10-0 team and try to get a win against a good Lemont team tomorrow to win the championship would be a good way to head into the tough part of our schedule with Wheaton Warrenville South, Wheaton North and Naperville North coming up."

Those three can wait. For now it's all about beating the Indians.